Second Thoughts...

I've been having a lot of second thoughts about public school lately. I'm not sure why exactly, nothing has changed, or at least when I started having these feelings, nothing had changed.
I was feeling pretty good about public school, at least our public school. The arts initiative that Grant has is fantastic. It's the only school in our school system that has a... what's the word I'm looking for... foundation? that's not right. Any way, they have money in savings set aside for art materials, which is pretty cool. They have a mission to incorporate art in their curriculum, which they actually do. Sollie and has class performed a dance for the last assembly, which was actually really cool. It was a "color dance" the kids had different colored scarves and the dance was all about colors mixing and changing... very cool. He's also been really enjoying music and comes home singing new songs every week. I love that! Tomorrow he has his "enrichment" class and he picked recycled art, which is led by a parent volunteer and he's been very much enjoying it and was going to miss one of these classes which is after school one day a week but he lucked out and his teacher was sick and class was canceled, he was so happy he wasn't going to miss it!
Okay, so all of this is great, right? His teacher is great, she has two boys that go to school there (which says something because it's not her home school). She gets boys and she's just an all around energetic, creative teacher.
I think the fact that Solomon had a couple of headaches a couple of weeks ago and I had to go pick him up is what started it. I figured out that he was kind of "taking a break" from reading group. Reading is 90 minutes, every single day... he says it's long and boring. I don't blame him. We had a talk about taking long, slow walks to the bathroom, spacing out and daydreaming... yes we are teaching him bad things but he needed other options to get a break other than fake a headache and get sent home.
Then there's the whole peer group thing. First of all, one of the things I was excited about was that his teacher actual did snack. Lunch is at 11:30 and school gets out at 3:30, so I knew he was going to be hungry. Well I started noticing that snack was usually cookies! The way she did is that each kid has a "special day", they bring snack and get to bring something for show and tell... So 19 kids, it's usually about once a month. I started noticing the cookie boxes when I'd volunteer and asked the teacher if they are getting a lot of cookies, then started asking Sollie what snack was every day... cookies,cookies and more cookies! Five days a week, argh. Very disappointing. His teacher was disappointed as well and put a note in the newsletter and it's been improving, so that's something.
The other thing is just some of the kids seem like they've been exposed to entirely too much media at a young age. We are not Waldorf purist by any means but we do not have cable and that helps me keep what they watch to a minimum and make sure it's age appropriate. We are taking the kids to Disney Land this year, they don't really even know what "Disney" is nor do they know many of the characters but they know kids who have gone and it will be a fun family vacation... any way there's a kid in his class who kind of reminds me of Bart Simpson... There's kids that just don't seem like 6/7 year olds at all, if that makes sense. That just makes me sad. I want more nurturing, I want kids to be able to be kids.... does it all come back to play? Are these kids just not getting enough time to play creatively? I don't know what's going on. Apparently there was a fight in the lunch room the other day with first graders... I guess I just want him to be nurtured and protected more, I want him to have more time to play, more outside time... The day seems too long, he's tired, he complains. I know they have a lot to cover though.
I looked at our local Waldorf school again, did the math, dreamed... one of the major problems, besides the cost... there lease is up at the end of this year and there's no solid plan in place. This may actually be the end of this Waldorf school. Of course, homeschooling is still an option... I'm primed and ready to pull him at any time and go back to homeschooling. Especially with this last piece of news we just got... he's getting a new teacher! The district is hiring his teacher as a math specialist to train other teachers... and her last day in the classroom is December 1st. Talk about un-nurturing... I can't believe they are doing this so far into the school year. It's crazy and very disappointing.
Sigh... I wish there was something else out there for us, option B. I don't see it.